Yes, taxes must be reframed to remedy income inequality, however taxes on robots won’t achieve the right results. An increased and more progressive taxation in combination with simpler laws, more transparency and fewer rules and regulations for the economy, as well as a simultaneous unconditional basic income to ensure lifelong financial security, and, last but not least, increased investments in education, healthcare, environmental initiatives, infrastructure, research and development, COULD BE an approach for a solution. I acknowledge that there is no simple answer to a complex problem, but my opinion is that all problems can be solved if on the one hand we accept that not all have an equal opportunity to participate in the digital world, and, on the other, we (citizens, society) have the political will to keep the social justice and peace. At the end of the day, we should start to figure out what problems we have solve, instead to search for an answer.
According to John Tukey (American statistician): "An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question." Even though it is difficult to enforce higher individual taxes, “the right answer to the wrong question, is still the wrong answer” (Nicolas Cole, Contributor, Inc.com).

Yes, taxes must be reframed to remedy income inequality, however taxes on robots won’t achieve the right results. An increased and more progressive taxation in combination with simpler laws, more transparency and fewer rules and regulations for the economy, as well as a simultaneous unconditional basic income to ensure lifelong financial security, and, last but not least, increased investments in education, healthcare, environmental initiatives, infrastructure, research and development, COULD BE an approach for a solution. I acknowledge that there is no simple answer to a complex problem, but my opinion is that all problems can be solved if on the one hand we accept that not all have an equal opportunity to participate in the digital world, and, on the other, we (citizens, society) have the political will to keep the social justice and peace. At the end of the day, we should start to figure out what problems we have solve, instead to search for an answer.
According to John Tukey (American statistician): "An approximate answer to the right question is worth a great deal more than a precise answer to the wrong question." Even though it is difficult to enforce higher individual taxes, “the right answer to the wrong question, is still the wrong answer” (Nicolas Cole, Contributor, Inc.com).

More important than taxing robots would be adjusting taxation on companies that benefit society by creating jobs and employing people. Taxation policies that support our communities and the brick and mortar stores that line our streets are important. Over the years big government has become toxic for small business.

The owners of small businesses are burdened with spending countless hours trying to comply with the red tape rather than in earning a living. According to the Small Business Administration only 10% of Americans own a business and 80% of these are single self-employed businesses. More on the importance of small business in the article below.

The idea of a tax on robots is probably 40 years old if not more. I remember it from the times of the first Club of Rome report. The EU did not exist at the time, much less its Parliament.
I think it will be unavoidable.
For a simple reason: Public Costs are always borne by the productive system and the old trick of transferring externalities to de Public Sector is reaching its end of life cycle.
In many countries Public Sector jobs are much better paid than Private sector jobs. How long can this last?

Tax Robots? We may consider robots the slaves that do manufacturing in places like China, Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico, Brazil, etc. working for nearly nothing, and see why the great capitalists like so much the concept of "globalisation", because all is done to maximise profit. And it´s all that matters to capitalist: maximise profit. Corporations would love to cut all human jobs and substitute them with robots to maximise profit. They never cared about unemployment. And they are the ones that are always pushing to increment it. And robots, would be a dream come true for them. So a possible future might be this: All work is done by robots. 1% of the humans benefit from this, while the other 99% is unemployed and starving to death...

Through millennia labor saving progress almost always created more jobs than it destroyed. With the advent of machines that replace human intelligence (Intellimation?), that no longer seems to be the case. Starting in the 1970s with ATMs, we started destroying more jobs than we created, and digitization greatly accelerated that tendency. Clearly we have to rethink many aspects of economics given this trend. A tax on robotics/intellimation seems like a good step in the right direction.

Perhaps when the robots and automation takes enough of our jobs then people will rise up and resist. Dr. Goldschmidt on this blog is the one closest to the right answer I believe because it also addresses the huge problem of globalization created wealth inequality. Remember if you don't like something then tax it. You will get less of it. If you like something don't tax it and you will get more of it. Simple econ. 101 rules still apply but this must now be done on the new global framework of global trade that is demanding fairer and more mutually beneficial trade rules of the road. The predatory global one way free traders model has outlived its usefullness.

Why not let each one of us ( and by extension, our families, friends, communities of different kinds) mange our own finances with robotization? Such a methodology will ensure freedom, innovation and management of resources optimized for sets of activities, groups and clusters of all kinds.

Allen Cookson
There's an implicit assumption that there will be a surplus of labour with the growth in robotization. The long-term solution to this is reduction of the human population. Alternatively there are many possibilities for useful employment such as scientific research ,expensive medical treatment for rare diseases, constructing beautiful, but expensive buildings, repairing aging infrastructure. All these things require education and training for researchers, managers, technicians, service workers, etc. In the Great Depression, unemployment needlessly coexisted with needless unmetlabour demand. All this , as today, because of flawed economic theory.

Allen Cookson, are you volunteering to start the reduction in the human population by becoming the first one to sacrifice yourself?

You are right- most of the recessions and the depths of the Depression were caused by bad economic and government policies.
Both the Great Depression and the length and deep effects of the last recession were primarily policy caused.

Retraining of those workers displaced by robots is clearly essential. Funding that retraining by some form of tax is also reasonable. If the US and its major trading partners all agree on that tax being levied on the use of robots then fine. Without such an agreement, for the US to levy the tax on robot use unilaterally would hurt our productivity and competitive international trade advantage. If no such international tax agreement can be reached, the tax to fund worker retraining in the US should come from general corporate and individual tax revenues, not from the use of robots, which makes us competitive for international trade. Otherwise, the US would be acting against its own interests. By the way, a temporary tax of this sort would certainly become permanent, because this issue is not temporary.

Soon we will have neurotechnology-enabled robots programmed to deter us (using whatever sticks and carrots it has found to be effective, after machine training on extensive psychological profiling) from taxing robots.

The industrial revolution of the early 20th century triggered the Great Depression, the rise of demagogues and wars. This resulted from an increase in machine power from one horsepower to 100 horsepower for farming, manufacturing and transportation. The computer revolution promises a much more significant discontinuity in our workforce, economy and politics as the cost of computation has fallen by a factor of one trillion over the past 50 years. We are now just seeing the accelerating leading edge of the integration of computers into every aspect of society.

The deterioration of family purchasing power, as measured by wages as a percentage of GDP, has already fallen over the past 45 years as computerization has taken place. A fundamental change in the federal relationship with corporations will be required if we are to retain a sustainable economy and democracy. I believe that the best way to accomplish this is to impose an excess profit fine on corporations of 100% if and when they exceed their historical ratio of profit to wages. Such a fine is not intended to be collected, but rather to induce corporations to share their increased gross profit with their employees in order to increase owner income. This would leverage the best aspects of capitalism to grow and sustain our way of life.

As I have already suggested, the answer to robotization should be given through profits, but subject to new formula, mamely, adjusting the tax rate on the basis of payroll/value-added ratios: the lower the ratio, the higher the tax rate, subject to minimum-maximum rates.

Taxing robots might make sense if there was any evidence that robots were actually having a significant impact on the economy. However, the actual data shows almost the opposite. Productivity growth has crashed (to zero or near zero) throughout the Western world. So much for Tech (including robots) transforming the economy.

Of course, if robots really destroy jobs, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to stop immigration first. Immigration has huge negatives even with job losses. Immigrants taking jobs are just one more reason to close borders.

If Robots increase productivity and cuts costs the increased profitability will be taxed either as income tax or corporate tax/dividend tax. And if Robots can be taxed mist machines need to be taxed. the list might include: Computers, tractors, cars, aircraft, telescope, microscope, light bulbs, generators, dams and bridges, Lifts, Pumps, compressors, one can add to this endless list. Only Robot that is now taxed is the Father, and the mothers who have joined the workforce as well!! We may have in the future only Robots going to office, factory and the field, at which time they be taxed. Even then only the total family income may taxed and not the Robot. Surprising to hear this voiced by Schiller and Gates. I believe they need to articulate their case better

Amazing what economist of a certain ilk will come up with. Now they want to slow growth and productivity. They love finding ways to get government more involved in the private sector and finding ways to support people doing nothing for themselves. Their view of an ideal world is one big machine making everything and a government that decides how to distribute that output. We have already seen this model unsuccessfully used in our history.

The problem is 'what is a robot'? Is an automated traffic gate for parking a robot? Is a tractor that autonomously plows with GPS then is driven by a human for other chores a robot, it an ATM a robot? Luddites have been resurrected.

Actually, proposed "Robot Tax" is a tax on productive activities, that are not labour. Currently, there are many jurisdictions that already been applying a range of productive activities taxes with various tax bases for years, among them Italy with IRAP and France with CVAE. Tax bases of current similar taxes vary, and may include deduction from Gross profit of labour costs or may not. So, if to build Robot Tax on existing similar tax examples, they , at first , need to make sure that labour costs are always deductible, and then it is questions - do these taxes need further adjustments, or they are Ok if make all plant, machinery and software depreciation/amortization non-deductible? For me it seems that an aggregate approach is more justified as takes aim at productive technology as a whole vs. labour participation, and also easier to administer and to comply with.

What Professor Shiller is proposing is just another bit of social engineering using taxation as a means of coercion. Like all such schemes, it presumes that governments are wise enough to implement them properly. There's not a single known instance in all of recorded history of that being true. It's among the greater of the pernicious failures of "Progressivism" that it relies heavily on such schemes.

Can the author of this article enlighten us as to how does he expect a multi-operational (multi jurisdictional) robot operating out of the Sahara desert on solar energy is meant to pay tax and in which jurisdiction?

Ramsey's rule has to do with a consumption tax and is not relevant here. The robot tax is an income tax. The idea is that the robot is a special type of machine which acts just like a certain type of human and so should be taxed equally.
The optimal tax rule here will have to do with disincentive effects. However, we don't think of robots as preferring leisure to earning and consuming so once again the theory of taxation has no purchase here.
A different 'Coasian' approach might be to grant property rights in jobs to workers affected by robot competition. The employer can either 'featherbed' the worker- i.e. pay him for doing nothing- or train him for some other work. In this case, there is no loss of tax revenue to the Exchequer. Effectively, the robot is paying tax because a human who otherwise would have been unemployed has a job because of the robot and thus the tax the human pays is actually attributable to the robot.
The problem here is that new companies using only robots may escape the tax unless there is an industry wide levy. However, the agency which determines the levy may be vulnerable to capture. Furthermore, we can expect entrepreneurs to 'game' the system by redesigning robots so that they fall below the defined threshold.

In a closed economy, the author's conclusion may have some merit.' A moderate tax on robots, even a temporary tax that merely slows the adoption of disruptive technology, seems a natural component of a policy to address rising inequality.' For small open economies, however, the loss of dynamic efficiency caused by this 'moderate' or even 'temporary' tax is likely to result in everyone being worse off long term.

There is a separate problem arising from agent principal hazard which should be mentioned in this context. Suppose my pension fund, or wage insurance fund, is investing in robots such that I lose my job and thus stop paying into the fund. At an aggregate level, the fund is quite correctly maximising revenue. However, it may well be that the majority of its beneficial owners are harmed by its actions. Here a Coasian approach may be helpful. Perhaps institutional investors should pay into a fund which protects the interests of their beneficial owners. However, once again problems of rent seeking and agency capture could arise.

I think Mr. Phelps is right about the fundamental importance for individuals to have a place in society--a job today defines that place, and without it we will create social problems that could tear our civilization apart. Robotization for all its increase in productivity will be for nothing if this only produces more inequality, more poor and less people who will be able to buy the goods and services these robots produce. That's just a economic system of diminishing returns ultimately destroying the system itself. The real question should be asked whether this is really progress or just another evolutionary dead end? Unless you can find a way to keep people busy, a way that they feel life is important however society supports them, this will only create divisions in society. And there is another important question that has not been discussed accept in academia which is whether AI should be developed to the point where these entities become self a where. we might be opening a Pandora's box, that again could be an evolutionary dead end for us. I believe that there are technologies that are not progressive to human evolution. Genetics is another that could lead to dire results if not handled carefully.

I think Gates is not aware that his own software (e.g. excel) is no different than a drill, driverless car or industrial robot. It replaces a human in doing a specific task.
Does this means we should tax every tool humans invented?

Granted that no one like to feel on the dole (although the US Republican party thinks that people with low incomes do), but why does support for incomes that might be "lost" to rapid labor saving technological change have to be so indirect? Why not a much higher Earned income tax credit finance d by a high progressive consumption tax?

Consumption taxes may not go where you wish them to. Does everyone pay the consumption tax (a VAT like creature, I suppose)? If so, those the tax is intended to help will be those most hurt: sales taxes are quite regressive. Also note that the rich are the rentier class, which implies less income to consumption, more to investment. Next, take a look at the "Happiness Survey" which is, I think, on the BBC site. Best are those with least disparity between highest and lowest income (sort of) which might suggest a target: robots do all the work; income is divided equitably. Plenty of areas for that to go wrong, too, but I agree with you: more ideas are desirable.

In a perfectly robotized world, goods producers should enjoy great return on capital. Creative jobs may still stay, as it is almost impossible for robots to become creative (tell a robot to compose a song), such professionals may still earn decent income. However, for repetitive-task workers, they'll lose their jobs and couldn't get a new one.

IMO, there's no need to robot taxes. As I said, businesses will earn high ROC, effectively raising the tax revenue of governments. Since government's tax revenue have increased, People who lost their jobs to robots should be subsidized with adequate living allowance at a level that will not dis-incentivized creative people from working. A general "pension" fund by government should be introduced and implemented gradually to solve the "retirement" income for the unemployed people.

"The subsuming of land within the category of capital by nearly all post-classical economists had amounted to a declaration that Nature is merely a subset of human economy-an endless pile of resources to be transformed into wealth. It also meant that natural resources could always substituted with some other form of capital-money or technology.
The reality, of course is that the human economy exist within and entirely depends upon Nature, and many natural resources have no realistic substitutes. This fundamental logical and philosophical mistake, embedded at the very core of modern mainstream economic philosophies, set society directly on a course toward the current era of climate change and resource depletion, and its persistence makes conventional economic theories- of both Keynesian and neoliberal varieties-utterly incapable of dealing with the economic and environment survival threats to civilization in the 21st century."
The End of Growth.
Richard Heinberg.

@Fung Fei - you are completely correct - there has never been a computer that does anything of original creativity - all they do is find ways to bind into silicon already released human creativity. The problem is that this 'captured ability' is often better than 95% of whats out there. For example, IBM using Watson can apparently diagnose symptoms to diseases better than any doctor.

@Michael - My bad, should've checked before commenting. Still, that's NOT creative, if you get my point. Hence creative professionals are to stay. Only human can "create" songs/art/movies/designs/etc from first-principle imagination.

@Jose - Manufacturing will stay in a big way, for sure. Somebody (or something) is still gonna make your processed food, your clothes, your house, you cars, your iPhones, etc. In a fully robotized world, they can make stuffs at godlike speed with super efficiency. Assuming that Apple still charge the same price on future iPhones, they can make reeeeally good money (sorry that I'm again over-simplifying). By then, government tax revenue will increase, either due to higher corporate profits, or higher tax rates which will be passed on to consumers.

@Fung Fui- there are already a lot of AI written songs and they are VERY, VERY good because they can learn the lessons of all previous composers by ingesting the music, analyzing using mathematical techniques and correlating against which ones are popular.

Value is a humam construction, it has some ground on labour cost, but it has many different parts. Goods aren't just raw materials and labour, they have much more and what we call the the augmented product.

We humans place high value on humam interaction, its what is responsible for most of our memories and experiences, and that's how we are going to evolve.

Robots are seemingly just tools, so taxing certain types of tools, namely robots, rather than others e.g. hammers might seem odd at first. However, if we consider that the robots are tools, but no more than the human employees they replace in routine jobs were tools, it seems that a transfer of the tax burden from one type of tool to the next is necessary and self-evident. In other words, there could be a tax on tools proportional to their complexity, e.g. human beings are complex tools, but no more, within the activity considered, than the robots that can replace them, however hammers and pencils are rather simple tools and should be taxed only moderately. More broadly, it looks similar to saying that whatever generates revenues should be taxed, from land ownership, capital ownership e.g. stock, human employees (paid directly with money) to robotics employees (paid indirectly with money by buying them electricity, machine oils, software updates etc).

Income tax is an extractive and regressive system and governments of all persuasions have institutionalized the economics of wealth transfer.
This corrupted collection system has led to a mendicant populous who's basic human rights are predicated on the politics of ideology and where their immanent labour rights have be arbitrarily conciliated to zero.
That his or her robotic replacement should be subjected to form of income tax is of little or no consequence to the displaced of the future. The introduction of a wealth tax and its equitable distribution is a conversation of far greater importance than taxing robotics.
RWD.

I can't buy into any of Mr. Davidson's arguments, but he and Piketty (sp) may be correct that a wealth tax is most logical and effective. Jose, you missed a beat: corporations are not against welfare -- just welfare for people. Socialize corporate losses, capitalize gains.

Agriculture and Manufacturing are a dead weight, responsible for most of the subsidies in our economies, and they still have the nerve on supporting right wing movements and being against welfare state...

So would I have to pay the tax on a robot if I used it exclusively to make my life easier at home by taking tasks off my hands? I imagine I would have to. Maybe we should pay FICA and income tax on on things we do for ourselves, because we are displacing someone we would pay to do those things, and they would be paying those taxes. I am ready to the IRS to start checking IDs of people mowing lawns.

Much of the robot technology imported to the USA already has tariff imposts, née tariff escalation, on it. Any gold and other conflict minerals used in the technology from African continent countries can be up to 75% under invoiced fro there, which is already inequitable for the African country budgets suffering from the circa $7bn cost of servicing malaria and related health needs. So wouldn't it be inequitable to ignore the source country taxes only to transfer wealth from US corporates using robots to somewhere else in the US. If globalisation is to be supported we could avoid such an inward focus.

Good article that, at least, should deserve a deep second thought to many analysts. Just to make a remark. The article says that "The idea of a tax on robots was raised last May in a draft report to the European Parliament", but truly the first time this idea was proposed was in my analysis on this issue, published by a Spanish media that is a leader in economic analysis. It's in Spanish, but just as a verification, I copy the link following. And thanks for your article, it really contributes to this debate, that is key for the future of our economies and... Of our societies as well. Thanks.

Tax on robots or roboting applications is pure non sense. There is already a sales tax on it but is very minimal. No fiscal discipline can ever keep pace with the ever evolving and changing digital landscape. To correct the current wide inequalities, Tax can only be applied on assets being capital, IP, M&A and other similar assets or transactions. Any other suggestion won't be useful and may be counterproductive and cumbersome.

You are correct Mike. They are just lobbyists selling irrelevant ideas of their paymasters. When one has the creator (founder) of a digital platform earning ZERO pay but billions in Royalties, the inequality cannot be more blatant.

Great point. Looking at the research on inequality (see Piketty for example) it is clear than income inequality is not the problem - the problem is asset inequality. A good safeguard I would suggest is that inheritance tax is 95% for everything over $2mil - then you will hear the elites squeal. Right now they are happy to join in discussion on income inequality because they know it is meaningless.

The US government only raised 11 percent of its tax revenue from corporations. The US government could stop taxing corporations and tax the profit from business by taxing all income including capital gains the same, including all payroll taxes.

You are correct that the consumer increasing seeks individuality in a world of commonality but you cannot compare McDs and gourmet burgers, they are not competitors, one is selling food the other is selling an experience. McDs have looked at robot burger flippers and the cost point is near. So the question then is can gourmet be robotised and Japanese work on robo sushi suggest technically - yes. However if the consumer is seeking experience then the robo gourmet will still fail. I heard of an interesting failure when a hairdresser tried to go mobile, visiting customers at home. There was a lot of logic behind it but it failed and the conclusion was the customer actually wanted to get out of the house and have a social event not have home visit, the hair do was a means to that end

Freshly dumped workers - If enough people are affected then they vote accordingly which is what happened with Brexit and Trump

@Steve, the moment your job can be replaced by a Robot, or machine, its has lost part of the value attached to it.

When we buy stuff, we place a value on it, so with increasing robotization the goods are going to have less perceived value and the services more value.

When you go to a Mcdonalds or a Gourmet hamburger joint, the raw materials are the same, but the value of the meal is different. Productivity is such a 19th century thing...

Blue collar jobs hold decreasing value for quite a while, there is nothing to do about it, and it shouldn't be a calamity, they just have to learn new skills. By the way aren't the ones that believe in the law of the strongest?

They will not just displace the blue collar jobs they will displace white collar ones, why do you think the technology is limited. Even with job roles that are not fully displaced they can be part displaced. Its the same process that advocates of migration put forward, utilise lower cost to allow specialists to specialise further and increase productivity. The problem then is ensuring your specialisation has long term continuity and is valuable

Semantics. Income tax on profits does not affect behavior of companies much as they just do whatever they would have before, but it does mean they must make (say) 30% higher profits before tax to earn the same return - so this could be called a distortion. But when Prof. Schiller phrases it like that he makes taxes sound like a bad thing for economic activity.

As a US citizen, I would happily support a tax on robots, particularly because it has often been said that the nihilistic attitudes that resulted in the election of Donald Trump as president are an emotional response to rising inequality. Another reason to support this tax is that low wages in foreign countries usually given by politicians as the cause of US unemployment is a major distraction from the major reason, increased productivity from automation and robotics.

Eventually, we will have a situation where no work is necessary - where machines can learn and adapt in all the ways people can. In such a world, we would still need economics. The reasonable way to handle such a situation would be to have prices on things, probably set by government according to the energy and other resources required to produce each thing. The money collected from these payments would be distributed to the people, and there would be no need or justification for any inequality because there is no need for any incentive to work.
We are just beginning to approach this situation, and it is good to think about how we get there from here. One think is clear - there will be less and less justification for inequality. A basic income or negative income tax scheme will become more and more necessary.
A tax on robots might be one way to pay for this, although I can see all kinds of definition problems in deciding what is robot output and what is human output. Unless someone can tell me just how such a tax would be assessed in a way that would be fair and not subject to interminable litigation, I think it is probably impractical. And we need a permanent solution, not just a temporary one.
There are alternatives. A carbon tax is one fairly easy one, but probably we would need more than that. A value added tax is another well-tested scheme. But eventually, the government will need to be setting prices based on resources used.

Taxing robots would mean taxing capital that is productively used, while leaving the wealth that's used to fit out life styles untouched. More general wealth and consumption taxes combined with some relief from payroll taxes would make more sense.

Taxing wealth simply means that the wealthy will have to hire more lawyers and consultants to protect their wealth, as they do now.

As for passing it on, there are ways. Look at what the Clintons did. After becoming multi-millionaires giving speeches for ridiculous amounts based on Bill's presidency they started a foundation to collect donations and installed their daughter in a cushy job as president.

It's rather an iron law of economics- if you tax something you get less of it. How do you propose to tax the capital a person acquires as a result of learning new skills? Capital is not just accumulated money(value) but also accumulated knowledge(both individual and corporate), organization, invention and other intellectual property, relationships(both contractual and interpersonal) and other intangibles that go into making a person or a company successful and profitable.
What does the tax on productivity due to the overall wealth increase for society? Typically reductions in capital increase are associated with reduced productivity and reduced earnings for both workers and companies.

All the professors are saying the same thing, that there is no simple solution to a robotized workforce. They cite a general lack of support for adjustive measures like UBI, and for the most part, they are probably right, for now at least. But thought through to its logical conclusion a robotized workforce means the typical economic patterns no longer function, and society will break down as demand will drop to zero along with income. So something has to give. Either people in general have to change their feelings towards economic adjustments like UBI or they have to learn to live in a World where instead of the top 0.1% owning (say) 90% they own (say) 99.999%. What will the result be? I think the end result is unclear right now, and it will be a long and painful journey and that we are at the very start of it. Perhaps a good comparison is the long and painful journey we have walked with regards to violent conflict - we live in a more enlightened age where we understand just because we possess unstoppable military means it does not mean we should use them at every opportunity.

Fair enough, trouble is coming. However do you think there is any difference between 90% or 99% ownership? Is democracy unable to respond, is it completely neutered. At what point does the depletion of consumers stop the consumer society functioning so the model fails. Furthermore how are citizens who need services to pay for them or have them paid for them. Those under attack will be the middle class and the old because they will either have the cash which can be extracted (or assets) or have the need for services. Services can be rationed or denied because the whole purpose of money in a society is to ration access to goods or services. Cash or assets can only be taken form those holding cash or assets. Sp those are the two easy reach options. The figures hint that debt saturation has occurred so borrowing - used to prop things up by government - is due to get less available as an effective (temporary) solution. Only a fraction of human activity in the West is required for survival so the rest is some sort of consumerism, so the real question is what is consumerism to become because inequality will progressively affect consumerism, and the demographic is part of the inequality. Service provisions such as healthcare are intrinsically a form of insurance purchase by a citizen via tax payments. Insurance is a form of gambling as this article tries to discuss http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38905963 thus government is a giant casino that has not correctly calculated the odds and does not have the money - because it has no money of its own - to pay out the citizens who did not think they were gambling because it was sold as a sure thing. Good luck with that

The assumption is there is something to tax and that is where the proposition falls down. The problem is an ageing demographic with fewer workers paying tax to cover the ongoing costs of retirees. Taxing robots simply does not address the problem, the problem is people and the maths is straightforward. The only solution is the direct or suspended sequestration of assets for the key group which looks a near certainty. With a shrinking proportion of the population working the chances are that automation will be required for society to function. Talk about robot taxes and UBI miss the point, they are both about redistribution or substitution of tax revenue when the issue is the tax revenue size versus social costs. They - robotax and UBI will prove as relevant as taxing woollen caps whilst concurrently passing a law that woollen caps must be worn to church on a Sunday (except for nobles of course) and taxing citizens glass windows so people brick them up. Both have been attempted in the UK amazingly without success.

BTW A physical robot is just a machine and there are replication issues in the real world -physical products have production and function implications. The product which is easy to implement and replicate is software - done at the speed of light at near zero cost - which is why Bill Gates is the richest man in the world. It is the near zero cost of replication of software which is a new product category and it has been around for some time now. I do not see Bill Gates proposing software is taxed to the hilt and I do not see anybody suggesting mass euthanasia, probably because they hope to get old themselves

I can certainly see an argument for treating robots as 'employees' for taxation purposes, to compensate for reduced income taxes from the no longer employable. This of course increases the cost of producing whatever is being produced, or service rendered. What is not addressed is the need for some kind of regular income so the unemployable don't become the starving homeless. And can still exercise that ultimate, essential, 'calling', in the market economy, consumption.

Of course, people need to feel some sense of 'purpose'. Why this need come primarily from work, is a mystery to me. Clearly the puritan /protestant 'work ethic' has us in its baneful grip. Thee are other things. Such as? Really, use a little imagination. Exercise for reader.

What's happening is an economic revolution as profound as the change from feudal to merchant/industrial economy. There's no point in trying to map this future in detail - we haven't the faintest idea what to do or how to do it. In fits and starts, these difficulties will be addressed and more (or less) dealt with. Trust your children. It's up to them to fix it, when they're not worrying about the next storm or flood.

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